Headaches at the Temple of the Closed Mind
by halfpromise
Summary: Outtake scene from Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything. I might add more so they're like mini drabbles with short intros to indicate where they were originally going to fit into the story. Warnings: drug use, profanity and POKER!
1. Chapter 1

**Headaches At The Temple Of The Closed Mind**

* * *

**Ace in the Hole**

A debauched present to Albasti. Many thanks to the twitter crew who read over this for me. xxx

_This was originally going to be the second scene for chapter 39 after the news breaks of the Tsukino events in chapter 38. Obviously L works out what Light's done somehow, but I've had to edit out any spoilers including the introduction scene, so I'm sorry about any plot holes here. I hope you can overlook them._

* * *

On first appearance, there doesn't seem to be anything unusual when my car pulls up outside. L's car is badly parked in the driveway and one window glows like a shocked mouth in the dark. But then I notice the sheen of other black cars parked off to the side under the trees, and suddenly this house is no longer the sanctuary it appears to be. 'Only one survivor,' a hushed news broadcaster on the radio says before he's silenced like the car engine.

My instincts are more sensitive than most and I trust them implicitly. They're saying: 'Call the counter terrorism forces and get the fuck out of here!' at the moment, but that might be a little extreme and anti-social. I should remember something I might have forgotten that's so urgent that I have to be driven to Kantei or somewhere else, but I'm also curious and this is my own damn house. One of the guards tells me that 'Lawliet-san and some of his friends arrived an hour ago.' Nice, except that L doesn't have any friends. He wouldn't allow my guards to search any of the strangers, I'm told, and unfortunately no protocol has ever been set in place where the wishes of those I apparently approve of enough to live with them can be ignored. Obviously he should have been overruled for the sake of my safety, but my guards are fuckwits and what can you expect when they're as intelligent as mechanics? After being told this, I definitely can't make my excuses now, so I march into the Underworld as if I couldn't read the signposts and am immediately confronted with L sitting at the dining table in semi-darkness like Dr. fucking No without the white cat. No, instead of the white cat, there's a pure white cloud swirling above him and the three ugly men that surround him. They're lit only by the TV and a lamp which is poised over the table like a nosy stalk staring at a small mountain of papers, cards, bottles, glasses, and I shouldn't be surprised, but there are what are either sweets or buttons on the table. Unless it's related to the cold and steady stare L bestows me with, the only other thing I'm aware of is a distinct 'lawyer smell' and the strangeness of a house that feels colder than it is outside. I'm made to feel like an intruder in my own house or a browsing annoyance in a shop near closing time.

It's not worth paying much attention to the men with him who, after glancing at me for a second, go back to bending over the playing cards in their hands and sweating. There's too much smoke for it to just be from a few cigarettes, and just as I think that, the man next to L offers him a meth pipe. L breaks my eye contact to look at the glass pipe like it's the biggest cock he's ever seen and looks back at me and my disappointed tiredness with eyes that are wide and seeing colours just that much more clearly and brighter than usual, I'm sure. He smiles from one corner of his mouth. You are fucking kidding me.

"Get out," I say to everyone in the entire world, putting my keys into my pocket and stalking a few feet further into the room, checking what I can see of the rooms leading off this one.

"Hi, Prime Minister," some guy giggles, and then they all start giggling apart from L, who frowns and passes the pipe straight on to the next man in the circle. There's a thin, suspicious line of smoke drifting from his mouth which makes anger heave at my chest like a heart attack. Why are you doing this?

"We're in the middle of a game here," another guy tells me. His skin looks uneven and cratered, particularly next to L's alabaster smoothness, so I ignore him. "Sit yourself down and —"

"Are you ok?" I ask L. Not that I actually care at this moment, but I say it to disarm him. It works, though you wouldn't know it.

"I didn't know you'd be back this early," he replies grumpily, tossing two blue sweets into the centre of the table with a moody "Raise 80."

"Like hell you did. These fuckheads can go now or I'll kick them out."

"You and whose army?" a long-haired man asks me, laughing over his piles of sweets which are pooled into separate colours. "I can see the setup here — he's like my wife. Ok, call," he adds, and pushes a puddle of blue sweets towards L's, all of which are quickly gathered up by the only man who's wearing his jacket.

"Fold," the scrawny and the obvious addict amongst them sighs, stands up, flips his cards up on the table and twitches his way to the window. "He's got more of those heavies outside."

"No problem. We can take two," the other man says. "You can buy in if you want, Prime Minister. Last chance."

"For such high stakes? No thanks," I reply sarcastically, because that's just pathetic. What's the point? I walk over to the table just to remove my considerably depleted whiskey and vodka decanters from the table. L's eyes watch me, the reflection of the TV colouring them a glassy grey like ghostly cataracts. "Smoke any more of that shit and you're dead," I tell him before I go to the kitchen to consider my options. I could have them removed, but that wouldn't look good if my guards saw the den of iniquity in my house, even if those losers are playing for M&amp;Ms. Especially if they're playing for M&amp;Ms.

"Six, Queen, Four," the wanker banker must say. There's a dull knock followed by another dull knock. "King of Diamonds on the turn," the wanker banker adds. L checks again, so I know he's got a good hand. Maybe kings, maybe three of a kind now, because I know L plays poker like he plays life and just bluffs his way through it. The long-haired smoothie's voice screeches out: "Gotcha running, baby! Bet 220."

At this point, I walk back inside and sit on the couch on the other side of the room from the Dr Strangelove circle.

"Have you seen the news?" I ask L, who doesn't flinch from the spread of turned cards on the table.

"Yes," he replies lowly. Oh. I see.

"There are five heavies now, Namikawa," the addict announces anxiously, looking out of window at my guards outside.

"Fuck," the long-haired man sighs, identifying himself. I've heard of Namikawa. L's mentioned him as some cretin who works for the only real oppositional law firm to L's in the city, and his description matches this cretin. "Well, we could still take them. There are four of us, not counting the politician teabagger. Lawliet, it's your house. You're not going to let him boss you around, are you?"

"You'd look so much better with a bullet in your head," I tell him, and that's it. He stands up, I stand up and take off my jacket to beat the living shit out of him. I've had a very long day, these fuckers are in my house, L's participating in illegal drug use _in_ my house _with_ them, and I don't like this Namikawa's hair and greasy arrogance. He looks like a good punching bag and I'm covered in invisible blood already.

"Sit down and put your dicks away, you gutless wonders," L says, the only person who's checking his cards instead of watching the standoff, and so has a certain diffusing sinister aura that's more commanding than usual. It distracts Namikawa, who sits down, and I consider running at him to beat his face and his teeth as if it's all I was born to do. Of course L's comment isn't aimed at me, so I elaborate.

"And I'd love to put a bullet in your head that'd take a pathologist half a morning to find and extric—"

"I am _done_ with you, Light Yagami!" L shouts suddenly. The air itself seems to leave the room and create a vacuum of silence and toxic shock while he hunches further forward. The skin creases over the bridge of his nose and makes him look more like an otherworldly creature on the cusp of transformation into his true form. "Sit down, shut the fuck up and wait until I am fucking finished."

I've never been shouted at like that before in my life - that's all I can think, and I find myself sitting back down and doing what he told me to. The redness of the blood that has rushed to his face dissipates like a boner when a cockring has been removed, and he glances up every few seconds as if he's just shown everyone his cards, shat himself and blurted out an embarrassing anecdote from his childhood. I'm not really sure what just happened but I've got a hell of a hard on, and I'm not sure what happened there either. Today has been so strange. I've felt stimulated all day, just riding a climax constantly, and it's actually quite tiring in a primal way.

"What's the small blind again?" L coughs nervously.

"We're not playing with no fucking… I mean, we're not playing for blinds, Lawliet. You need to call or fold," Namikawa says.

"Then I'll have to call, I guess," L says, coyly biting his thumb when he throws some sweets towards the dealer. That probably causes him more anguish than if it was real money. Hold on, did he just order me to sit down and shut up and I did what he said?

"You guess? I thought you knew what you were doing," ratlike Namikawa cackles to himself. God, I hate him. L better be bluffing with his anxiety, because Namikawa's smugness would be even more nauseating than the other chemicals in here if he wins.

"Four of Clubs on the river," the wanker banker says, turning over a card.

"Maybe we should go," the tweaker suggests, still looking out the window and chewing his nails. "One of those guys is a 200 pounder for sure."

280 pounds, actually, but I'm watching L stare ten thousand-yards into a Wonderland only he can see, by the looks of it, and Namikawa is staring at his profile, failing to read him. You'll get nothing out of him, shitbag; I've been trying for years and it's hard enough to read him even when he's not high as a fucking kite.

"Do you want action?" Namikawa asks him in an aggressive hiss. L said that to me during poker once, but then we left the game and fucked instead, and I hope Namikawa doesn't mean the same thing. I laugh and hug my arms across my chest while L does nothing but blink sleepily. Seconds are drawn out until Namikawa says: "All-in," and even the tweaker prises his eyes away from the window to 'ooohh' at the gobshite bravery as all Namikawa's sweets are pushed forward. This might be slightly tense if they were chips or stacks of money and Rolexes, but as it is it wouldn't surprise me if they were playing for a few hundred thousand pounds of sweets. If it really is for money then I could buy a suit for that much and L's probably not going to back down, so he might be giving his money away to this loser. I feel like his money is at least partly mine.

"Strong play," the dealer says in between sucking on the meth pipe. The tweaker leans over him and the dealer blows smoke into his mouth full of rotting teeth. What the fuck? Only people on benefits do that.

"Or stupid," I grumble.

"What you say, politician?" Namikawa turns on me. He looks quite violent. I am quite violent. We should settle this like men, but officially I'm a pacifist and my face and knuckles are too important. I'll have press and statements tomorrow, the election's in a week. And I can't even be sure that L would back me.

"He's milking you, you idiot," is all I'll allow myself.

"Ah, you can shut up. Fold now and save your money, Lawliet."

"What should I do, Light?" L asks me. Well that's insult to injury.

"You don't care what I think."

"True, but I'd be interested to know if what you think correlates with what I think."

"I know you're going to call, L."

"Not necessarily. He says that he has a pair of aces and the pot's over a mil now."

"It'll be over 2 mil if you call," Namikawa says, snatching the meth from the dealer. "Call and give me your money,"

"I'd like Light's opinion first," L answers with stretched patience. He's too meek to be believed. Namikawa doesn't realise this though and gets more and more agitated, taking up double the space he requires by spreading his arms out to point at me.

"Fucking Yoko Ono over there? Remember that The Beatles split up and it was all her fucking fault," he says. Oh, just one punch before I die, just one.

"What do you think I should do, Light?" L asks me again. Like he's ever wanted or needed my opinion. There is always a first time though — I've always been the best reader by far, but it's not even very difficult in this instance.

"You should call," I sigh, leaning back into the shadows.

"Why?"

I don't answer right away. Instead, I choose to watch Namikawa reload the bowl of the pipe and heat it over a lighter with the only expertise I think he's capable of. His cards can't be so bad but nothing magical. He put more confident bets down before the flop, then it blew his chances and he's relying on bullshit now.

"Well, he checked before the flop, right?" I tell L. "Which means he has nothing."

"I was bluffing! Have you never heard of that, Prime Minister? More like prime rump," Namikawa adds with a giggle the other idiots respond to, but L never looks away from me.

"Namikawa?" L says calmly.

"Yeah, I know, no offence meant to you, Lawliet, but he's egging me and I hate politicians, y'know? I —"

"Say something like that again and I will smash that pipe down your throat," he tells him, and turns to him with a glare I can feel the burn of from here. Namikawa crumples and slumps in on himself to go back to puffing furiously on the meth pipe. It's pretty funny. It's hard to look away when L's looking at you. I thought it was just me in the early days, but I've seen that he has a way of fixing people with his eyes like a stern dog trainer, leaving them cowering or still blankly staring even when he's left the room.

"And he's nervous," I say. "Since the flop, he's had that whole bottle of water."

"I've got to stay hydrated, I'm on ice!" Namikawa shrieks. Yeah.

"It's a good point I noticed myself," L tells him, "I've never seen you be so safety conscious when doing ice or anything, actually, Namikawa. I think you've got pocket sixes."

"No," I say. "He's got a nine and maybe an eight, suited. He was hoping for a straight flush but he didn't get it." My confidence in this is fairly infallible, so I lean forward to ask Namikawa: "And I'd say you've got spades, am I right?"

"Call," L says without any hesitation. He starts pushing mounds of sweets forwards, and the moment is notable only for how that's the one time I've ever seen him actually offer anyone anything sugary. Namikawa now looks damp with sweat and stares at the five cards on the table for some time as if they might magically change. The tweaker is bent over the table looking like his eyes might pop out, and they nearly do when Namikawa slams his hand on the table and stands up suddenly.

"Fuck you and your little hooker, Lawliet," he says and shows his cards. What do you know? A nine and eight suited. Spades as well. What can I say? L's cards _were_ two kings. 'Cowboys' in poker terms, which would have some poignancy if I cared.

Namikawa drapes himself against the back of the chair again and snatches the crack pipe back from the dealer who has been smoking it consistently throughout the game. L practically embraces his winning stash and pulls it across the table towards him.

"Cash or instant transfer?" L asks in a bored tone, pulling his laptop onto the table. "There's a limit with transfers, so I'll trust you to pay the rest tomorrow if you sign an IOU."

"Yeah, big wow, 2 million sweets, yen, whatever. Now you lot can get out of this house," I say.

"Dollars," the dealer tells me, turning to look at me over the back of his chair.

"US dollars?" I attempt to clarify with my mouth hanging open. "You're playing for US dollars? 2 million dollars, L!?"

"You thought this was for yen?"

"He said sweets! 2 million fucking sweets!" the tweaker cackles.

"I wish they were," mumbles Namikawa just as L swivels the laptop on the table towards him, the biggest loser.

"Pay up and we'll continue this meeting tomorrow, gentlemen," L tells them, standing up with obvious discomfort. The men form a sad line like boys waiting outside the headmaster's office and I find it mildly amusing. 2 million dollars. Two. Million.

"Ohh shit," the tweaker sighs. "I need to win at least some of my money back!"

"You had the opportunity to but you just kept losing it and it seems that it's my money now," L says. "Do you need some time to get the money together?" he says sympathetically, putting his hand on the tweaker's shoulder.

"That'd help, thanks."

"Tough. Pay or I'll send my bailiffs round tomorrow."

"What about the train footage? We didn't talk about that," the dealer says, weirdly calm considering the amount of meth he's been smoking. He should be clawing at the bugs under his skin by now.

"Yeah, about that," L says, casually picking at a hangnail. "I was thinking that you could accidentally lose it as part payment."

"I knew that was coming."

"Sometimes evidence just gets mislaid. It'd be nice if that would happen. Go back home to your wives and children and look them in the eyes and tell them that you lost a lot of money and you have to take out equity on their inheritance. Or not. _Or_ this train footage could lose itself and your personal debts would be more manageable. So, pay half now and I'll expect a phone call tomorrow," he smirks, and breaks off biting down on his thumb to take cash from the tweaker and dealer, then suddenly points his finger at Namikawa. "From a pay phone. Get your shit together and go."

He checks his laptop and, apparently satisfied, offers Namikawa a receipt. That's taken with as much humour as you can imagine, and like elephants holding each other's tails they start to file their way towards the door.

"You better watch yourself, Prime _Minister_. Good luck with the election," Namikawa snarls his lip in my face as he walks past me and out the door, and once the trail of them have left and I slam the door after them, I look at L.

Sweets scuttle as he drags them into a fruit bowl I'm sure I bought for actual fruit, but he seems to lose interest and massages his forehead instead and grab his whiskey glass when he leaves the table. My gaze of condemnation must be quite fierce.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" I ask him, following him up the stairs.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Is this your grand spiral into destruction that we've all been waiting for?"

"What are you're talking about?"

"Meth. You hate meth."

"I don't _hate_ it. It's just very 90s. I needed to win that game."

"You can't fuck around with it or junkies," I tell him, hearing that nagging whine in my voice that reminds me of every woman I've ever known. He ignores me and heads to the bathroom, and I follow him. I'm not sure why. "They're just going to go to the police and accuse you of supplying drugs and bribing them to fix a court case so they'll win, because I'm guessing that they're your opposition in a case, yeah?"

"They're not going to do anything except what I tell them. I have too much on them," he says tiredly, pausing only to rinse his mouth out with mouthwash, spit, then drink the rest of his whiskey. What is the point of that? What's the point of anything? Maybe there is no point. "I needed to win this case and they're all addicts that like poker. I have a problem with a case I need to win and the only thing that's stopping me is a fucking grainy tape that's just turned up for the defence. If that disappears then I just have witnesses and I can deal with them in court. I'm not going to sit there like a prissy bitch saying 'Not for me, thank you, I'll just stick to tea,' when they're passing a bong around. It's just not social etiquette, Light. We were sharing a point, not even that. It didn't touch me."

All the shit. I'm about to reply but his sudden closeness makes me turn my face away, more from the smell of whiskey and chemicals masquerading as mint on his breath. "And why do you care, anyway?" he asks in a slicing way. Oh fuck.

"How are you going to deal with the witnesses? By killing them?" I ask in a lazy, breathless sigh. Well, the air seems thinner than it was. His voice is almost a crackling whisper as his mouth hovers and glides across my cheek like he's sniffing me out, and my eyes close as though I have no say about it.

"You're the master at that now, Light. And you fucked Tsukino's wife to do it, didn't you, you bastard."

"What?"

"But that's for tomorrow. I was just going to go with demolishing the character of witnesses, but it depends. I really, really want to win this case."

In the mirror, I see his fingers feel their way from my throat to my tie, hooking on to it to pull on the knot with a growing impatience until it feels tight against the back of my neck like a noose. Long kisses are lavished on my face until I turn towards them, as if drawn towards a beam of sunlight in a cold room. But he'll be different in the morning. I recognise the dull anger and resentment masked by narcotic inspired tenderness, and he smiles like he knows it as well. There's an invisible matter he's forced out through smoke so he can love me instead of hate me, and tomorrow that'll be gone and I'll lie or be unrepentant. I don't know whether I'll be able to hide my pride and satisfaction, like he won't be able to hide his hypocritical disapproval.

"You'll like me on this," he tells me, so close that we're like a Klimt painting.

"Will I?"

"I like the taste of it. It tastes like apples and dying flowers."


	2. Chapter 2

Short outtake I'm posting it for Hannah and Dana. The scene it's from will be in the final update I'm writing but this part got hacked out due to the epic length of the whole. The background is that Light's having dinner in a restaurant with Mikami, Sayu, Matsuda, and Kira. L has gatecrashed. It's just a bit silly and sad.

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"Lawliet, hi!" someone shouts from across the room, arms waving in the air like a drowning man. Everyone looks towards the voice and watches what I can only describe as a Landkreuzer barge his way through the thin aisles, knocking into chairs and launching people forward into their plates with the massive gut that hangs over his belt. What the fuck is this? By the time he reaches the table he's already out of breath and pre-heart-attack, and leans on the back of Mikami's chair to smile at L with bulging eyes behind his thick-rimmed glasses. Panting like a decrepit dog that has escaped from the pound, he catches his breath, staring expectantly at L and me. He's wearing what looks similar to my old school uniform, which I find rather comic, but not enough to wish for him to stay.

"Oh. Hello. Who… How are you?" L asks him quietly. My eyebrows are so shocked by how terrified he sounds that they raise themselves probably a full inch up my forehead.

"Great, yeah! Well, my cat had a stroke," the man says, smiling and bobbing his head. I hope he's not a grief counsellor.

"I'm sorry," L replies.

"Yeah, just don't tell my wife I've been stroking the pussy!" the man laughs out in a booming way that shakes the glassware and scares the children. "Ha ha ha ha ha… Anyway, nice to see you, Lawlipops. Always sucking dicks or lollipops, this one, you gotta watch him," the man tells the whole table, looking at each of us in turn to make sure we're paying attention to him. "I always keep my back to the wall when he's around."

"I don't think anything less than a complete sensory collapse and a psychotic break could tempt me, but it's true, I do prefer seeing the back of you," L says, and "Hahahahaaa!" they both laugh, though L does with a certain nervousness. He looks at me with eyes that are pleading for assistance in fighting this force of darkness. It doesn't always work, but I find that sometimes it's possible to dismiss people by making them know how sincerely unwanted they are.

"Yes, it's all very funny but who's the tank?" I ask L. He clears his throat.

"This is… I don't know, but he works for another firm and he scares me," he tells me. The strange man shocks us all again by expressing both his hurt and his disastrous attempt to mask it with humour while he polishes the stream from his glasses on his shirt sleeve. He has a racking sort of breathless laugh like a pneumatic cough that shakes him and makes him appear even more unhinged than he would otherwise.

"Don't pretend you've forgotten my name, Lawlipops. He's scared of me because I was the defence and he was prosecution on a case a few years ago. Before he died, you know? I gave you a hiding, didn't I, Whitey," he says, smacking L's arm quickly and cackling like a hyena. I'm very insulted by this, so I slam my wineglass down on the table and glare at him. I can get rid of another one of these fucking lawyers. There are too many of the fuckers, they're like a plague. Suddenly the weight of the world is on him. He looks at me as though he's accidentally walked into a swamp of shit, which is strange because his presence makes me feel something similar.

"What did you say?" I ask him.

"Hey? Oh, hi, we've met before. I was just talking lawyer talk with Lawliet about —"

"No. Did you use a racial slur? Did you just refer to him by his skin tone and ethnicity?"

"When?"

"Just now, you fuc —"

"You lost the case, if I remember rightly," L interrupts me, edging closer to me to form a kind of block between me and the huge scrotum standing at our table.

"But I gave you a run for your money, yeah?" the scrotum laughs again, pointing his finger at L like a gun. "Saw you here and heard that you were knocking up the Prez. Yo, Prime Minister. You don't remember me, do you?" he asks me, holding the palm of his hand up like he expects me to smack it. Unfortunately for him, I'm not indoctrinated into surfer culture and have no wish to start now and with him, so I stare until he anxiously drags his hand through his greasy hair as if that was his intention all along. No one knocks me up. What the fuck do I have to do to prove to people that I'm not some cute, stupid uke? Fuck L on the dining table in the middle of an overpriced restaurant? Probably. Maybe I should stop waxing my chest?

"I haven't met you before," I tell him, still quietly fuming.

"Haaaa, yes you have!" he shouts, and with L now out of easy reach for slapping, he bangs his hand on the table next to Mikami, who jumps and moves his cutlery and bread bowl out of the way. The tankman is one of those incessant spitters when he talks, just to make this more unpleasant. "My friends call me Aho after the Nigerian footballer because they think I look like him, it's not because it means idiot. Remember when we met at that climate change documentary screening? GOD, it was boring, wasn't it? I was one of the sponsors. I was sitting two rows away from you. That close. You drank a Côte-Rôtie shiraz at the after party. I had the same," he tells me, protruding his chin and bouncing his head again like he's listening to a song only he can hear.

"I see," I reply slowly while my finger slides towards my security alert button. My safety has been compromised and I want my safety and to be far away from fuck ups with mental illnesses, although with my occupation that might be too much to hope for. L coughs into his hand and takes hold of my hand before I press my belt button, crushing it like we're an old married couple who hate each other but put up a good front.

"I think that, unless you did actually introduce yourself, sitting behind him and drinking the same wine as him doesn't really count as meeting him," L tells him.

"Ah, no, he'll remember me — I'm hard to forget!" the appropriately named Aho replies jovially like Father fucking Christmas. "Can I call you Light, Prez?"

"No," I say.

"Light Yagami?"

"No."

"Yagami?"

"No."

"Prime Minister it is then, pal!" he says boisterously, banging the table again. Mikami looks up at him this time, because he's really had enough, as have I, but I had enough before it even started. Where's my security? "This your son, is it?" Aho asks, pointing at Kira, who just laughs at him and hides behind my jacket and thus confirming Aho's suspicion one way or another. "It looks like you. Good way of making sure it's yours, hey? Because who knows nowadays, the way women are. Bitches, the lot of 'em. Whores. At least us fellas value the word commitment after we're forced into it," he says, looking at L clasping my hand like a vice, and when no one seems eager to agree with him, he just makes it worse. "Oh, I understand. You and Lawliet, yeah, I did hear about that. Can't pretend I didn't. All over the papers it was. But it's different for us, isn't it. I mean, I can see why. I don't blame you guys, y'know, you're good lookin' men, and you know what I like about men? You can talk to men, like with you two; you're great to talk to. We can really talk man to man. Can't do that with a woman, can ya? All my wife asks me is: 'Where's your credit card?' and she locks her door at night. Yeah, if I was ten years younger, I'd probably get myself a fella to… talk to… if anyone would… Anyway! Speaking of the little woman: your wife would have mentioned me, Prez. She walked past me on the way to the toilets once."

"She's never mentioned you," I say.

"She did, don't tell porky pies. Lawlipops says that — porky pies means lies. I heard him say it once. I don't know how he comes up with these things, he's a cracker, isn't he?"

"Get this person away from me or I'll call security," I tell L, pointedly adding for Ahō's benefit: "They have guns."

"Ooooh, I'm scared, ooooooh!" he howls, rocking from side to side and holding his hands in front of his face.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I recognise you now," I say.

"I knew you would!"

"Yes. You're one of those people who try to make up for how incredibly awful they are by being 'funny'" I say, doing a lazy jazz hand. The man looks stunned into a silence I'm very grateful for, but I'm too busy to appreciate it fully because I'm pressing my belt button to call security. Almost immediately there's the sound of a thousand elephants coming into the dining room again. "Say goodbye, L."

"Don't listen to him," L tells Aho. "You're not funny. Bye."

The man opens his mouth even wider, but security are already on him and leading him away, literally dragging his heels across the ground. Once he's a decent distance away, I pull back my plate from in front of L and eat what's left of it and pretend it was supposed to be cold.

"I don't know what I did before I had security to get rid of people who won't fuck off of their own accord," I mumble to L between mouthfuls.

"Yes. They are quite handy for that. But I quite like fucking people off myself. It sort of takes the fun out of it when someone does it for you," he replies, stealing a parmesan shard which until then was standing proudly from my 'Purple Peruvian' purée de pommes de terre.

"Why don't you just order something?" I ask him

"I'm not hungry. I've already eaten. Have you ever noticed that food tastes better when it's someone else's?" he says, dopily smiling at me.

"Can't say that I eat other people's food very often," I scowl towards my plate, moving food around for the sake of it.

"Who was he?" Sayu asks us.

"Don't worry… Light's sister," L says. "Your mind will attempt to rectify the trauma by erasing any memory you have of him soon." This is ironic since L has a block on my family's given names, which I don't think will endear him much. Not that it matters. Kiyomi knew birthdays, middle names and all kinds of shit, setting it to memory before she'd even met them. L struggles and then gives up on even remembering who they are because they're so unimportant to him. He forgot his sister's name once when he was drunk — it just went completely out of his head — and it took him a few minutes of going through his phone contacts before he remembered. It was quite funny.


End file.
